


Everything You've Ever Wanted

by sipuli



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Be Careful What You Wish For, Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF) centric, Dreamon, Gen, Good Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Guilt, Hurt No Comfort, Mentioned GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF), Mentioned Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Mind Control, Possessed Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Possession, So much angst, Sympathetic Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), as in the dreamon is basically the hiver, stealing terry pratchett's ideas because they're better than my own, unless you count like Very Fake Comfort, very much inspired by a hat full of sky, yeah he's not the villain in this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-25 20:14:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30094518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sipuli/pseuds/sipuli
Summary: Dream isn’t fully gone, he’s just been pushed so far back that he doesn’t have any remains of control left. He’s been squeezed into a tiny space somewhere in the back of his mind and the rest of it is open, defenseless for the… thing to explore and to take whatever it wants. His thoughts, his memories, his skills and habits and feelings, and everything that makes him him.It’s terrifying.Or: Possessed Dream is forced to watch as the creature that's controlling him slowly destroys everything that's important to him on the server.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 55





	Everything You've Ever Wanted

**Author's Note:**

> This fic really didn't want to get written. It caused me so many problems and grey hairs. But here it is - the Dreamon fic I've been wanting to write for literal months.
> 
> It's heavily inspired by A Hat Full Of Sky by Terry Pratchett, in ways that are probably obvious to anyone who's read the book. (If you haven't go read it! The whole Tiffany Aching series is a masterpiece.)

The red haze is just slightly thinner today. Not by much, but enough that it isn’t completely blurring Dream’s vision and making it impossible to form a coherent thought like it usually does. For the first time in days, he feels like he can think somewhat clearly.

These moments of clarity are a rare luxury for Dream. Most of the time he’s floating in a sea of comfortable oblivion, drifting from one brief flash of consciousness to another, never able to get a grasp of what’s happening around him. The fog wraps itself around every nook and cranny of his mind, smoothing and softening rough edges, obscuring his thoughts and making them heavy and slow, until all he can see is endless, soft redness. 

Sometimes it shows him things, beautiful things, happy things - memories and dreams and comforting lies. It can make Dream relive the happiest moments of his life, over and over again, and sometimes Dream wants to fight back because he knows it’s not real, but often he just takes what’s being offered, grateful for the chance to get to forget his hopeless situation even just for a moment. It’s exactly what the thing wants. It wants him powerless, devoid of hope, not bothering to fight back.

But today its grip on his mind is not as strong as it usually is, and a few rebellious thoughts have been able to free themselves from their shackles and break the surface. Things are not looking good, they say, and the part of Dream that is still himself agrees.

Dream isn’t fully gone, he’s just been pushed so far back that he doesn’t have any remains of control left. He’s been squeezed into a tiny space somewhere in the back of his mind and the rest of it is open, defenseless for the… _thing_ to explore and to take whatever it wants. His thoughts, his memories, his skills and habits and feelings, and everything that makes him _him_. 

It’s terrifying.

At first, Dream was sure that someone would notice. His friends know him, don’t they? They would notice that something is wrong, they would see that he isn’t himself anymore, and they would do something. They would help him. Find a way to drive the creature away. Something. Anything.

A day went by. Then a week. Then a month. No one has noticed anything and Dream is slowly starting to lose the hope that anyone ever will. The creature has been roaming freely around the server as him, doing whatever it pleases, without any sign of calming down. 

Every now and then Dream manages to focus enough to catch a glimpse of what it’s doing. Sometimes entire days go by with him being able to see and hear and feel everything. He likes to think it’s because he’s getting better at resisting its grip, but the depressing truth is that the thing is probably just letting him see what it’s doing to torment him. It lets him watch as it walks around the server with his feet and sows pain and destruction around it. Dream can watch, oh, he can watch and he has to - but he can never control the creature, no matter how hard he tries. 

And he rarely has the energy to even try anymore. He is so tired all the time, in a way that would make his limbs feel heavier than the world if he still had limbs. He would be struggling to keep his eyes open if he still had eyes. And it’s so easy to just give up, not even try to defy the inevitable, simply just let it happen. To let himself sink below the surface and have the soft redness lull him back to sleep.

But right now Dream is awake. He is wide awake and he’s doing what he can do the best. Thinking, scheming, making plans. He’s smart, he’s gotten out of tough spots before, he’ll figure something out. 

Somehow. 

He has a few ideas, not much more than pathetic little sparkles of hope, but they’re something. He has options. He’s been honing them from thoughts to plans and holding onto them as if his life depends on it because they’re the last thing of his own that he has left.

He could try to overpower the creature and take back control of his body, but that’s not going to happen. He’s been trying to do that for months now. The creature doesn’t seem to even notice. If he’s made any progress, it’s not noticeable.

He could try to get the creature to slip up, to make some kind of a mistake. Big enough that people around it would see that something isn’t right. But if it was going to slip up, wouldn’t it have done it already? It has been months. It can mimic him perfectly, and why couldn’t it? It has everything it needs in order to perfectly deceive everyone. It sees through his mind, it sees every thought and memory, there’s not a part of him that’s hidden from it. Sometimes Dream wonders if it even realizes it’s not him. Maybe it thinks it actually is Dream, and the real Dream is just an annoying little voice in its head. A voice that doesn’t matter, a voice it doesn’t have to listen to. It has everything it needs to be Dream, except, well… _Dream_.

But that part doesn’t seem to be as important as Dream thought.

He could try to talk to it. It’s possible, he’s done it before. Not being able to do anything, even move, gets excruciatingly boring after some time, and being able to talk to anyone is a good enough way to help the time pass. Their conversations are rarely long and never pleasant, but they’re better than nothing. Anything is better than nothing when you’ve been alone for long enough. 

So what could he do? He’s been trying to form some kind of a relationship with it. Not a friendship, but something friendly enough to be able to… He doesn’t know. Maybe negotiate? Offer it something in exchange for more freedom inside his own mind and body? But what could he offer it that it couldn’t already acquire just by being him?

Dream is doing his best to try to keep his hopes up, trying to convince himself that this is just temporary, that sooner or later he will find a way to take back control of himself and show this, this… _thing_ , whatever it is, what he’s made of. But his resolve is weakening by the day and every time he’s allowed to see the outside world things seem to be worse than the last time.

People say eyes are the window to the soul. In this case, it’s the opposite. Dream’s eyes are his two tiny, tiny windows to the outside world, on the days he’s lucky enough to find the curtains open.

Today must be his lucky day.

He can see the red haze part and reveal what’s in front of him, he can feel his senses returning to him. It feels good, it feels so refreshing after floating in the red numbness for so long. The heat on his skin, the ground under his feet, it makes him feel alive again. Like he’s a human. Like he hasn’t been reduced to a shadow of a memory, too weak to fight back.

Heat. Orange light. Bubbling lava. It takes Dream a few seconds to adjust to being able to see and feel and hear again, but he quickly realizes he’s in the Nether. The creature is walking with _his_ legs, holding an axe in _his_ hand, looking at the obsidian path that stretches out in front of it with _his_ eyes. The hot armor weighs him down and strains his limbs, even despite the enchantments that make it feel light as a feather against his skin. The creature doesn’t care, and why should it? This isn’t its tiredness after all, this isn’t its body. It’s just using it. It’s making its way across the obsidian bridge with quick strides, paying no attention to the way the heat lures out droplets of sweat and makes its - Dream’s - breathing heavy.

The thing has been taking care of the body, or at least it has been taking care of it enough to keep it healthy and strong enough to fight. It has been feeding it and giving it sleep and training and making sure all its injuries are properly tended. But it doesn’t seem to pay much attention to things such as pain or fatigue or loneliness, needs that can be ignored without immediate problems. 

Sometimes Dream wonders how that works. It’s using his body, his nervous system, so it has to feel whatever he’s feeling, right? Doesn’t any of this bother it?

Does it not know how to keep a human body comfortable? Or does it just not care?

Right now he can feel how his legs have been walking a little bit too fast for a little bit too long, enough for him to be slightly out of breath, and that isn’t a pleasant experience when the air is thick with heat and fumes that slowly rise up from the bubbling sea of lava below him. Dream never liked the Nether much, but right now he hates the whole dimension.

 _Hey fucker_ , he thinks, as loud as he can. _What’s the hurry?_

Dream knows it might not answer. It often doesn’t. But sometimes it does, and even though Dream hates it with every fiber of his being, it’s the only company he has. Well, the only company he can talk to, anyway. And even that is only because it can read his mind, which isn’t something Dream particularly likes thinking about.

The creature must be in a good mood today, because it replies almost immediately. “I don’t want to waste any time. I’m going to see Tommy,” it says, except it’s actually Dream who says it - it’s his mouth, his vocal cords. Feeling his own mouth move and produce sound without any input from his brain feels alien and wrong and makes him want to rip out his own tongue. He’s never going to get used to it.

What makes him more tormented than the feeling of the thing using his mouth to talk though, are its words. Tommy. It’s going to go see Tommy.

Dream would feel sick if his stomach was still his.

For a few weeks now, the creature has been putting a lot of time and energy into making sure Tommy is feeling as miserable as possible. First it forced Tubbo to exile him. Then it brought him to a remote beach in the middle of nowhere. And now it’s visiting him, nearly every day, to make sure he can’t get back on his feet and build a new life. It destroyed everything he owned and it keeps getting rid of any small scraps he manages to gather, crushing his hopes down time after time.

But more than the physical, tangible things the creature does, Dream hates the things it _says_ , with Dream’s voice, with words that could as well be his. He hates the way it has wormed its way into Tommy’s mind, made him believe that no one out there cares about him anymore, no one but him. It’s good at what it’s doing, it knows just the right things to say to make Tommy believe every word and cling onto the creature like it’s everything he has.

And the thing Dream hates the most is that _this could be him_. The creature doesn’t have its own thoughts, its own mind or ideas. Everything it has it’s taking from Dream. Dream is good at manipulating people, and that’s why the creature is, too. Dream would never do things like this to Tommy - of course he wouldn’t, they are _friends_ , as much as Tommy sometimes annoys him - but he could. He could if he wanted to. And the thing took the part of him that knows how to twist people’s minds and make them into something easier to control, and it used that part to turn Tommy into a shadow of his past self.

Dream might not be the one who is doing this to the boy, but that doesn’t mean it’s not his fault. If he was a better person, if he never let himself think about the dark things that he wouldn’t actually do, the thing possessing him wouldn’t have anything to work with. It would have no weapons.

But instead, it has the whole armory. And the guilt is eating Dream alive.

These were all _his ideas_. He brought them to life. He is the reason things are the way they are.

Dream wouldn’t have built a massive prison, but he had played with the thought before - as a cool idea, as a hypothetical way of making sure that L’Manberg wouldn’t cause him any more problems, but not something he’d actually go through with. The thing saw the idea in his head and it took it and now it’s a reality that never should have been.

Dream wouldn’t have turned two kids against each other, torn their friendship apart and left them wondering if the other one really hates them - but he had thought about it. In the dark hours of the nights during the first war, when he was making plans on destroying the nation that was threatening his peace. It had been a fleeting thought, an idea that made him want to forget he ever even thought about it, something too cruel to even consider. But it had been there, however deeply buried, and the creature took it and weaved it into its plan.

Dream had wanted the discs, that’s true, but he would have never gone to these kinds of lengths to get them.

From what little amount of conversation he’s been able to have with the thing, and from everything he’s seen it do, he is fairly sure it doesn’t really _want_ anything other than what it got from Dream’s head. It has no goal, no desires of its own. But it can see what Dream wants and that’s what it wants as well as long as it’s using Dream’s mind. 

If Dream didn’t want anything, or if he only wanted good things…

 _That’s not fair_ , his rational thoughts try to argue. _No one is a saint. No one never wants anything bad for anyone, someone like that wouldn’t be a human. The difference is that you wouldn’t have actually done any of this. You know right from wrong, you know there are lines that must not be crossed._

That’s what this thing is lacking. It doesn’t have self-control, it doesn’t have that tiny little voice in its head that tells it not to do something because it’s too stupid or too reckless or too cruel. It just sees the things Dream wants, even those things he doesn’t want to want, and then it takes and takes and takes until it gets them.

And what happens when there are no more things left to want?

_There are always more things left to want._

Dream is awoken from his thoughts as the stifling hot air of the Nether suddenly changes into a cool, refreshing ocean breeze. The thing has reached the other portal at Tommy’s end of the path and walked through it. Dream braces himself for what he knows will soon follow. He almost hopes that the thing would push him back into the haze, to not make him watch this. But he isn’t granted that mercy. He is powerless to fight as the creature walks along the shore towards the hastily put-together house made out of stripped logs, smiling when it sees its prisoner greet it with a shallow grin that doesn’t reach his eyes.

Dream hates seeing Tommy like this, in torn clothes covered in dirt, with his hair hanging, dirty and lank, by the sides of his face. His posture is hunched, his whole being looks defeated. The worst part is his eyes. They have lost the shining blue that used to mirror the sky, and in its place is a dull grey.

Dream wants to scream at the creature for doing this, for taking the loud-mouthed brat who no one could tame and turning him into… this. It shouldn’t have been possible, Tommy was a flame so bright that no one should have been able to extinguish him. It just wasn’t right. No one should have to suffer as Tommy has, but the fact that it’s Tommy of all the people somehow makes it a million times worse.

The thing is killing him, slowly but surely, and Dream can’t do anything but watch.

He watches as it walks across the small yard of Logstedshire.

He watches as it starts chattering with Tommy, joking around as if this was just a friendly visit and not something much more sinister.

He watches as it digs a hole to the ground like it does every day.

And that’s when everything starts going wrong.

When Dream later thinks back to that day, he never remembers the details. Everything is a blur of screaming and pleading and explosions, Tommy’s panicked voice and the burning ball of rage in Dream’s stomach, rage that isn’t his, rage and disappointment and feeling of betrayal that doesn’t come from him. It’s the creature feeling its own emotions with Dream’s body. 

He remembers his own thoughts, words that he tried to scream without a mouth, how he tried to stop it all from happening. That’s the only part that has been carved into his memory crystal clear with no missing pieces. How he tried to make it stop and how he failed.

_No! Don’t you dare! Don’t you fucking dare!_

_Why are you doing this? Hasn’t he suffered enough?_

_Please stop this…_

Tommy’s voice, his frantic apologies, mixes with the creature’s threats and the sound of explosions ripping the little house apart and leaving nothing but ruins and wreckage. Dream screams and he pleads and he bargains and he begs, _how can you do this, how can you destroy the only thing the kid had left, don’t you understand you’re going to kill him, you’re destroying him from the inside and making him wither away_ , but the creature could just as well be deaf to his words. It doesn’t show any sign of hearing or understanding, even though Dream is sure it hears him. It has to.

He doesn’t stop trying to talk to it, not even after it has destroyed Tommy’s nether portal and told him that no one is allowed to visit him anymore, not even when it’s making its way back to the SMP lands and the ruins of Logstedshire have been left far behind, not even when they’ve travelled so far that the plume of smoke that rises high above the plains can’t be seen anymore. 

Dream has seen the creature drive away his friends, ally with a terrorist and a dictator, threaten a country with an unnecessary war, play with the throne and hand it from person to person like a cheap plastic toy, turn two best friends against each other and do a million other evil things, but for some reason, he feels like this time is the worst.

_How could you do that?_

That’s the only thing he can think about.

_How could you?_

“Listen. I’m tired of your whining.”

Hearing his own voice answer him surprises Dream. He stopped waiting for a reply a while back and settled to just raging alone without an answer to his questions, he didn’t think the creature was actually listening to him. What’s even more surprising is that it sounds annoyed.

Dream didn’t know it could feel things such as annoyance. Rage, yes, when things didn’t go as it had planned, and joy when they did - but rarely anything else. Or were those feelings stolen too, were they just part of the facade? A way for the creature to pretend to be more human-like?

 _And I’m tired of you destroying my life_ , he hurries to think, before the creature could change its mind about talking to him. _I’m tired of you hurting everyone around you_.

“I don’t understand you. You’re acting irrationally.” Dream can feel it furrowing its brows - his brows - as it tries to force Dream’s words to make sense. “You thought the kid was annoying. He was causing you trouble. But when I solve that problem, you call me cruel. You humans are always the same. I come and I offer you everything you’ve ever wanted, and sometimes you thank me at first and sometimes you won’t, but at some point it always goes to this. You are never happy with what I give you.”

 _Humans are smart enough to know that the things we want are not always the things we_ want.

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

_That’s because you’re not a human, no matter how hard you try to be one. You’re just a monster who thinks it can be something else._

The creature sighs. Dream has a feeling it doesn’t want to keep arguing with him. 

“I don’t want to listen to you. Will you shut up if I give you something else to think about?”

Dream knows what that means, and he knows it’s both an offer and a threat. 

An offer to let him forget about all this, even if it’s just for a moment.

A threat to pull him back into the haze, even if the things the redness can show him are comforting.

He wants to say no. He really does. He doesn’t want to be weak, he doesn’t want to be so easily controlled with nothing but a promise of empty visions. But even if he knows they are just visions, only retellings of his memories from when he was still himself, he can’t help but long to see them again. 

The things the creature can show him are kind and deceiving, and after being a prisoner in his own body for so long, Dream is ready to accept any kind of escape.

He doesn’t have to say _yes_. The creature can see into his mind, see how he struggles with the decision, how the fight is over before it even begins. He can see how weak Dream is before the promise of a beautiful lie.

He can feel his mouth twisting into a smile. It isn’t his smile, but he doesn’t care.

_“Come on, Dream,” Sapnap says. “George and I found a cool place we want to show you. It’s pretty close to the community house. We could build something there.”_

_Dream jumps off his horse and grins. “This better not be a stupid prank like last time.”_

_Sapnap grabs him by his upper arm and pulls him towards the path, his face shining with the pure happiness of living the perfect life with his best friends. “Only one way to find out, right?”_

_And Dream follows him and lets the memory consume him until it’s more real than the reality he’s not strong enough to face._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading the whole thing! As always, feedback is incredibly appreciated!
> 
> (Twitter saw this first, plugging @sipuli_ because I'm a shameless self-promoter)


End file.
